“Blood, pain and an all-surpassing lust for one man settled so deeply into his bones, the need had become part of him. Bottomless, like the touch he craved. Vadim.”

“And heaven help him, there was that pain again, the one that pierced him to his very marrow and started all that emotion bleeding out of him.Dammit, he loved her.He’d been denying it for weeks now, but he could deny it no longer.Not the giddy drug of infatuation. Not the mind-blowing drive of unadulterated lust. Not the bone-deep need to possess.It was all of those things wrapped up together, but so much more. It was simple, really. She had somehow become all that mattered.”

“I'd heard about people falling in love, and I'd heard about lust. What I had never heard about was this all-consuming need to be inside another human being. I felt this desperate compulsion to become one with him. This was desire. This was to crave. This was what if felt like to want.”

“He had never taken a woman like Bride. One who wasn't biting and clawing at him as she demanded he please her. Something inside him relished the rarity of this. The gentleness. In a life where violence and territory and blood wars reigned, it was nice to have a reprieve. A tender lover's touch. The human side of him craved this. It craved her." - Vane”

“Dan wanted to cry out, or scream and yell and destroy with fists and boots. Anything, anything at all to break through the onslaught of emotions, but all he had was his lips, two arms, and one hand. Tongue, teeth, as well, and the most gut-wrenching sensation of feeling, physical, mental, gathering deep in his guts, spreading and searing through his body, traveling across blood. ‘Vadim’, it hammered through his being, ‘Vadim. Alive. Vadim.’ And he was lost.”

“Some part of him had hoped that a woman might one day see beyond his scars to the man he was inside. But Megan was doing more than just ignoring his ugliness. She was _accepting_ it with a woman's gentleness, her touch soothing memories of savage pain, grief, loneliness.”